Ensayo sobre Mesoamérica en inglés

SECTION ONE: Indigenous Mesoamerica

b. To What extent has the history of Mesoamerica been taught from a Eurocentric perspective? What theories, ideas, and/or terminology are problematic when trying to assert an Indigenous perspective?

Picture yourself one day waking up in a distant planet in some other universe. What do you see? How do you feel? How do you describe it?  I would say that more than likely nine times out of ten you simply would not know how to explain the situation accurately to me; similarly, when the first European explorers came across with the coast of Mexico, they could not understand the natives’ culture. They portrayed the natives as savage, barbaric and carnivorous people. This is because in order to understand people, you have to understand their culture, but since there is not written in history books from the natives’ prospective, this can be quite difficult. It has been possible for Mesoamerican history to be taught from a Eurocentric perspective to a large extent because the history itself is biasedly written.

Eurocentric ideas are the base of our way of learning and considered "common sense." We live in a world where everything that is European is idealized and is seen as superior to everything that is not from Europe. Philosophy and literature are assumed to be European philosophy and literature. The best that is thought and written is assumed to have been thought and written by Europeans. In my entire high school career, I cannot recall a single book that we read as a class which was not Eurocentric. Even senior year in high school where my English class was precisely called “American Literature,” literature was not truly “American.” We focused on traditional European literature like “Romeo and Juliet,” Beowulf,” and “Macbeth.” Furthermore, history is assumed to be European history, everything else being reduced to what European historians want people to know and believe. The problem however is a bit more complex if the European historians themselves don’t know how to interpret what they are writing. It is difficult to trust written history of Mesoamerica because the Europeans that wrote it came from a different culture.  Everything they saw here in the new world such as traditions, beliefs, and way of life was completely different than how it was back in Europe. It’s impossible for outsiders to accurately portray the history because they, themselves, did not understand exactly what was going on. The concepts of duality and certain aspects to it like human sacrifice and bloodletting rituals were things that had never even been imagined much less understood by them. Carrasco suggests that “Europeans believed the indigenous peoples were halfway between beasts and humans… they were portrayed as cannibals, sexually promiscuous, lawless, and misdirected by pagan gods.” It is completely understandable that indigenous people be categorized this way because, for Europeans, that was way of life was absolutely out of this world and never even thought of. Europeans had only one way of life drilled into their head: that is what they considered the “civilized” way of life. When they landed in Mexico and saw the way indigenous people lived life, they were stunned. Mesoamerican’s lived perfectly normal lives. They had their own reasons behind everything they did; they didn’t consciously kill each other for no reason, but for Europeans it might have seemed like things were done simply because the people were uncivilized or “wild.”

Apart from having very different state of minds, Europeans had a huge language barrier separating them from the Mesoamerican peoples. Having different languages there must have been many misconceptions and misunderstandings in history. There has been Misunderstandings recorded as early as 1510 when the Spanish first made contact with Mayans. As Carrasco says, “the Spaniards asked ‘What is this place called?’  and the natives replied ‘Uic athan,’ meaning

‘We do not understand your words.” The Spaniards, from that conversation, misunderstood the Mayans and believed that land was called Yucatan. They simply assumed things to be as they

seem without giving it much thought. Simple communication misunderstandings like this made

by Europeans are what make the history of Mesoamerica so unreliable.

Europeans wrote history as they wanted it to be known. For instances, now in day, because of Eurocentrism, we are taught to admire Christopher Columbus. We learned in school to think of him as a hero, but if you really think about it he defiantly should not be considered a hero in any way but more so a villain. When Columbus discovered what he thought to be the "New World", he had no idea that he would find a whole race of people. His intensions were to go out discover a "back door" route to the riches of Asia, India and the "spice islands.” As Acuna implies, Columbus was really not a super hero. He wasn’t as smart as we may think; he mistakenly thought he had landed in India but in fact he had landed in the Caribbean (opposite ends of the world). Apart from mistaking this continent with India, he introduced many tragedies to the new world. He exploited natural resources, enslaved indigenous people, brought racism, genocide, and most importantly destroyed Ancient cultures.

...